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Politics : Moderate Forum -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: tsigprofit who wrote (8873)	3/28/2004 9:43:21 AM
From: rrufff	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 20773

Although I've generally supported the Iraq war, I hope the issue of whether our resources could have been used more effectively in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia is explored more fully. Clearly - the US needs to be more pro-active in the Mideast, although Clinton certainly was there. The problem may just lie with Arafat and his supporters. Fatah confession sheds new light on Arafat's terror links By Amos Harel, Haaretz Correspondent A confession by a member of Fatah's armed branch in Nablus has shed new light on the extent of Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat's involvement in terror. The terror suspect told Shin Bet security service interrogators that money he received from Arafat was used to purchase weapons and to carry out shooting attacks in the West Bank. Raaf Mansur, from the Nablus area, was detained by Israel Defense Forces soldiers last February. Mansur headed a wing of Fatah's military branch, the Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades. His cell was responsible for attacks in the Nablus and Jenin areas. Letters confiscated by Israeli security forces from Mansur's home included pleas sent to Arafat for money to fund armed activities. Mansur told interrogators that his appeals to Arafat resulted in a monthly NIS 7,500 payment to him. The allocations continued up to the time of Mansur's arrest. Mansur explained that the money was delivered via Abed al-Fatah Hameil, who serves as a financial adviser to the PA chairman. Mansur and Hameil met several times in Nablus. Mansur presented a list of his cell members and, after reviewing the names, Arafat's assistant delivered the funds. Hameil would confirm the militants belonged to Fatah and that they were dealing with "military activity." In a few instances, Hameil helped find work for Mansur's men in the PA apparatus. Mansur confessed to involvement in shooting attacks in the West Bank (he claimed nobody was injured in them) and to sending his men to throw Molotov cocktails at IDF vehicles and settlers on roads east of Nablus. Arafat's money, he explained, was used to finance the purchase of firearms for terror cells and to cover expenses incurred in the armed activity. An indictment against Mansur is soon to be filed in a military court.

To: tsigprofit who wrote (8873)	3/28/2004 11:52:42 AM
From: epicure	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 20773

Worth reading: Awaking to a Dream ___________________________ By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN OP-ED COLUMNIST The New York Times Published: March 28, 2004 nytimes.com I have a confession to make: I am the foreign affairs columnist for The New York Times and I didn't listen to one second of the 9/11 hearings and I didn't read one story in the paper about them. Not one second. Not one story. Lord knows, it's not out of indifference to 9/11. It's because I made up my mind about that event a long time ago: It was not a failure of intelligence, it was a failure of imagination. We could have had perfect intelligence on all the key pieces of 9/11, but the fact is we lacked — for the very best of reasons — people with evil enough imaginations to put those pieces together and realize that 19 young men were going to hijack four airplanes for suicide attacks against our national symbols and kill as many innocent civilians as they could, for no stated reason at all. Imagination is on my mind a lot these days, because it seems to me that the only people with imagination in the world right now are the bad guys. As my friend, the Middle East analyst Stephen P. Cohen, says, "That is the characteristic of our time — all the imagination is in the hands of the evildoers." I am so hungry for a positive surprise. I am so hungry to hear a politician, a statesman, a business leader surprise me in a good way. It has been so long. It's been over 10 years since Yitzhak Rabin thrust out his hand to Yasir Arafat on the White House lawn. Yes, yes, I know, Arafat turned out to be a fraud. But for a brief, shining moment, an old warrior, Mr. Rabin, stepped out of himself, his past, and all his scar tissue, and imagined something different. It's been a long time. I have this routine. I get up every morning around 6 a.m., fire up my computer, call up AOL's news page and then hold my breath to see what outrage has happened in the world overnight. A massive bombing in Iraq or Madrid? More murderous violence in Israel? A hotel going up in flames in Bali or a synagogue in Istanbul? More U.S. soldiers killed in Iraq? I so hunger to wake up and be surprised with some really good news — by someone who totally steps out of himself or herself, imagines something different and thrusts out a hand. I want to wake up and read that President Bush has decided to offer a real alternative to the stalled Kyoto Protocol to reduce global warming. I want to wake up and read that 10,000 Palestinian mothers marched on Hamas headquarters to demand that their sons and daughters never again be recruited for suicide bombings. I want to wake up and read that Crown Prince Abdullah of Saudi Arabia invited Ariel Sharon to his home in Riyadh to personally hand him the Abdullah peace plan and Mr. Sharon responded by freezing Israeli settlements as a good-will gesture. I want to wake up and read that General Motors has decided it will no longer make gas-guzzling Hummers and President Bush has decided to replace his limousine with an armor-plated Toyota Prius, a hybrid car that gets over 40 miles to the gallon. I want to wake up and read that Dick Cheney has apologized to the U.N. and all our allies for being wrong about W.M.D. in Iraq, but then appealed to our allies to join with the U.S. in an even more important project — helping Iraqis build some kind of democratic framework. I want to wake up and read that Tom DeLay called for a tax hike on the rich in order to save Social Security and Medicare for the next generation and to finance all our underfunded education programs. I want to wake up and read that Justice Antonin Scalia has recused himself from ruling on the case involving Mr. Cheney's energy task force when it comes before the Supreme Court — not because Mr. Scalia did anything illegal in duck hunting with the V.P., but because our Supreme Court is so sacred, so vital to what makes our society special — its rule of law — that he wouldn't want to do anything that might have even a whiff of impropriety. I want to wake up and read that Mr. Bush has announced a Manhattan Project to develop renewable energies that will end America's addiction to crude oil by 2010. I want to wake up and read that Mel Gibson just announced that his next film will be called "Moses" and all the profits will be donated to the Holocaust Museum. Most of all, I want to wake up and read that John Kerry just asked John McCain to be his vice president, because if Mr. Kerry wins he intends not to waste his four years avoiding America's hardest problems — health care, deficits, energy, education — but to tackle them, and that can only be done with a bipartisan spirit and bipartisan team.